HTTP Delivery

Advantages of HTTP Delivery

There are a few distinct advantages of HTTP delivery versus other methods of delivery, such as email or FTP:

You get a delivery confirmation. The server response allows you to verify that each lead was properly received.

It is real-time. The lead is delivered immediately.

Feedback. The server response will often provide information on whether or not a lead was accepted and, if not accepted, a reason why.

POST versus GET

In general, an HTTP POST is intended to be used to submit information, while HTTP GET is intended to be used to retrieve information. Therefore, we always recommend using HTTP POST to submit a lead. See this article for more information about the difference between GET and POST: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/methods.html.

Select the "Use POST" checkbox to deliver leads with an HTTP POST. If this checkbox is unchecked, then an HTTP GET will be used instead.

Custom HTTP Delivery

Normally HTTP POST submissions are encoded as a form submission. That means that the request body contains key-value pairs in query string format (first_name=Bob&last_name=Jones).

However, some servers cannot accept an HTTP POST with the request body encoded in this format, and instead expect XML, JSON, SOAP, or some other custom encoding. The Custom HTTP Delivery method allows you to send an HTTP POST with a custom request body format, along with any HTTP headers that the server requires.

Posting URL

A URL uniquely identifies a server "endpoint" on the Internet. The HTTP request that carries a lead's data will be sent to this URL. The server will collect the data provided and issue a response.

Parameters

This section contains the values that will be sent in the HTTP request. If you have configured your destination to send an HTTP GET, then these values will be sent in the URL query string. If you have configured your destination to send an HTTP POST, then these values will be sent in the HTTP request body.

Server Response

Whenever a lead is delivered via HTTP, LeadConduit Classic will receive a server response from the recipient server. Interpreting the server response is a critical component of HTTP delivery. LeadConduit Classic needs to know all of the possible server responses and what they mean. Interpreting the server response is also known as response parsing. We have an article dedicated to Response Parsing.